The abundance of the summer season can be quite exciting, but also daunting. I try my best to make a plan each week after my trip to the farmers’ market about what I am going to do with all my produce, but given the quantities sold at the farmers’ market and life rearing its ugly head, a few vegetables slip through the cracks: a half pound of green beans here, some cucumbers there, you know what I mean. Maybe you’ve even had to face the shame of discovering rotting vegetables at the bottom of your crisper drawer. Those vegetables gave up their lives for you and you’re just going to throw them out?!

One solution is to cook all this stuff before it gets old but–and I’m sure I’ll be disavowing these words come February–a person can only eat so many steamed fresh green beans. For me, when nature’s bounty becomes a little too much to handle, I turn to pickling.

Maybe you’re thinking, “whoa,  pickling is too much to handle!” I’m not talking about your grandma hauling out the canning jars and putting up the whole winter larder (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Given the limitations of my stove and storage space there’s no way I could sterilize or properly seal a bunch of jars. But with refrigerator pickles, quick pickles that need to be stored cold, there’s no need to sterilize the containers or vacuum seal them: it’s just produce, spices, vinegar and you’re all set.

I had three particular overabundances to address: a bag of green and yellow beans that was two weeks old, a large bag of cucumbers that I had no chance of finishing, and the rest of the summer slaw from earlier in the week (which, obviously, was not dressed).

With all those vegetables stuffed into clean jars it was time to add spices. I don’t believe in using a recipe when making pickles; instead, I just put together a collection of what I vaguely consider pickling spices. With the beans I put in a few sprigs of fresh dill, a split jalapeño, a few crushed garlic cloves, coriander seeds, mustard seeds and peppercorns. Same drill with the cucumbers, except instead of mustard seeds I used caraway. For the cabbage I put in chinese five spice along with garlic and peppercorns. I usually prefer to use whole spices for pickling but my five-spice was ground; I don’t think it will be a problem, though those seeds floating around the jar are pretty.

At this point the pickles are ready to be, well, pickled. For this, pickling solution is required. I usually do a combination of two parts vinegar to one part water, with about two tablespoons of salt and ¼ cup of brown sugar if I’m looking for sweet pickles, as was the case with the cabbage. Vinegar choice definitely makes a difference here: I have had some excellent pickles made with champagne vinegar and I bet balsamic would give interesting results. Being economically minded above all, I usually just use pure white vinegar, a gallon of which can be obtained for less than a dollar. It tastes fine.

After a quick boil to dissolve the salt and sugar, the solution can be poured in the jars to cover the produce. With a short cooling they are ready to be lidded and put in the refrigerator. 24 hours later and the pickles are ready to eat. I think food safety experts might say pickles last refrigerated up to a month, but I have eaten pickled rutabaga that was over 3 months old and did not die, so proceed at your own risk. It probably won’t be an issue anyway, because after you try the first of your homemade pickles (trying my pickled cucumbers on a burger, for example, sent me into a fit of joyous expletives) they won’t last much longer at all.

Finishing up a visit to Saugatuck, Michigan (on Lake Michigan about 130 miles north of Chicago), my favorite find has to be The Summertime Market.

Driving back home from downtown Saugatuck on our last day here, and hoping to spot some sort of farm stand selling lettuces, we stumbled upon their little store. If you’re ever in the area, it’s very much worth a stop. They’re just on the other side of the bridge over Kalamazoo Lake from downtown Saugatuck. As they say, “Blue Star Highway… At the Bridge.” Great produce, great foods, great graphic design (!), and a solid mission. This is an all-around excellent place. I felt like I was at the farmers market, only somehow magically each farmer had brought exclusively the most perfect of fruits. Some inside, some outside.

Perhaps a bit gimmicky… but I really liked this… each item was marked with the number of miles it had traveled to reach the store. Here’s a little something from one of their take-away pieces:

We’re about eating local, like our grandparents did. We only sell produce from farmers we know and trust, and are located within 30 miles from our stand….

All of our products are made or produced in the state of Michigan. Except, of course the glass bottled real cane sugar Coca-cola….

If you know me, you know I can totally get behind a philosophy of local-everything-but-Mexican-Coke (plus olive oil, wine, etc.). Summertime also carries local cheeses, milk, and meats. I didn’t see any pork on their bulletin board, but hopefully they’re working on that one.

We picked up a beautiful butterhead lettuce, green and yellow beans, and 7-grain bread from local bakers Salt of the Earth. For reference, Salt of the Earth is opening up a new restaurant in Fennville, MI where Journeyman Café (sadly) closed this past fall. I’m sorry we missed their opening! It looks like they’ll be ready for customers later this month.

Thanks to Summertime! We much enjoyed our salad. I’d love to return next season.

Could a Vitamin Water lover and homemade food and drink lover bring himself to make his own “vitamin” water? Maybe. Maybe not. Has anyone tried the homemade sport drink recipe from Tuesday’s Well section of the New York Times? For me, looking at this recipe just makes me want to make lemonade instead. Then again, if given the choice between an actual Vitamin Water and a glass of lemonade I’d choose the lemonade, too. Here’s the recipe below.

Sports drink recipe from “Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook”

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1/4 cup hot water
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 3 1/2 cups cold water

In a quart pitcher, dissolve the sugar and salt in the hot water. Add the remaining ingredients and the cold water. The drink contains about 50 calories and 110 mg of sodium per 8 ounces, approximately the same as for most sports drinks.

On Friday night I headed down to The Four Firkins for a tasting of Crispin cider. There seems to be a lot of hype surrounding Crispin right now, at the very least on the Internet. With Joe Heron the CEO in the house pouring and talking about his cider, it seemed like a good time to see what all the talk was about.

As it  turns out, Joe being there was quite advantageous, since I learned all kinds of interesting things about cider and cider manufacture. Some of them being:

You don’t actually need a special license to produce cider–the bodies regulating liquor sales don’t require one and won’t issue one. Since alcohol distributors were wary of selling unlicensed booze, Crispin obtained a license but were only able to do so by claiming to produce apple wine. You will notice that Crispin cider has a nutrition information label, while beer and wine never do: this is because Crispin cider is regulated by the FDA, rather than the liquor authorities. So that’s why I don’t know how many calories are in my beer! It is also illegal to carbonate cider to the level of beer–it has to be slightly less.

It’s really hard to find cider apples in the US. Sweet apples are not good for cider. As Joe said, the more edible an apple is, the worse it is for making cider. He fantasizes about making a barrel of Cider from crabapples. Crispin uses a blend of apples including Granny Smith, Gala and some others and finish their cider with concentrate. Apparently some brewers make their cider exclusively from concentrate, and this is to be poo-pooed.

There were four ciders available to try. I started with the regular, which was slightly dry but pretty fruity, like a tangy apple juice. Next up was the brut, which as you might expect was drier. This was my favorite. The third was a limited edition that won’t be available in stores for a couple of weeks: the Honeycrisp. Don’t let the name fool you, it’s not actually made with honeycrisp apples–according to Joe you could hardly find a worse apple to make cider with: too sweet and hardly any acid. Instead, the Honeycrisp is regular made with honey. The honey was quite strong; it was the dominant flavor. Finally, after I had had enough free samples to ensure my bike ride back home would be an interesting challenge, Joe offered me a sample of the final variety of Crispin: Light. I liked the light because it was dry like the brut and without a very strong apple flavor.

As is always the case when I’m offered free alcohol, I bought some to take home. I would have liked to buy the brut but they were sold out; instead I bought a four-pack of the Light. Joe recommended to several people to drink the light over ice with a wedge of lemon. After visiting the farmers’ market the next day, I didn’t have any lemon, but I had a bunch of raspberries, so I made a cocktail that I think Joe would approve of.

In Midland for the week, but not wanting to miss out on a Saturday at the market, I visited the Midland Farmers’ Market with my friend Sarah this morning. She wanted to go in order to find cinnamon rolls from the Amish farmers. I found popcorn from the same vendors… and picked up a few things for my mom. She had asked for thin cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. I couldn’t believe the amount of fresh fruit in Michigan. Take a look:

I couldn’t resist taking home a Honeyrock, the name for the type of cantaloupe that grow locally in Bay County. This one was perfect. Juicy (take a look at the plate), sweet, and truly melt-in-your-mouth.

Along with the honeyrock, there were the cucumbers and tomatoes for Mom, apricots, and a bag of popcorn. What better late-Saturday morning snack than a slice of honeyrock and freshly popped corn from the stovetop?